302 Cokedale Road, Livingston, MT 59047 (MLS # 414460)

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Montana Living magazine called Parks Reece "Van Gogh meets The Far Side." This is the house where that aesthetic has evolved over 37 years. Reece started building in the 1980s with help from friends and never entirely stopped. Park County's inaugural Artist Laureate spent close to four decades working this log home the way he works a canvas, in layers, over years. His trout, his wildlife, his gift for adding levity to gravity, all of it is built into the place. Wrought iron railings bend into cattails. A steel panel cut into the balcony railing reproduces his "Balancing Fin and Yang," two trout circling nose to tail with a fly fisherman atop in endless pursuit. A radiant-heated concrete floor is washed green and blue with three trout coming up through the water, reflecting the same fascination with how a fish shifts color in changing light that started his career in Gardiner in the 1970s. Out back, rocks with glass eyes rise from the grass, like brookies to a dry fly. A hand-built antler chandelier hangs in the great room. Reece calls it the ant-elier. The house is Montana log construction with a Japanese undercurrent. Rice-paper-style panels wall off two upstairs bedrooms, and the second floor opens over the living room below. The studio is up there, skylit, with a balcony facing Livingston Peak and its own stairway down to the stone patio and deck. The daylight basement holds a rec room, a full bath, and the third bedroom. 4,516 sq ft of living space, 3 bedrooms, 2 baths, on 2 acres tucked into the hillside, sheltered by high ground on three sides and open to the Absaroka Range on the fourth. Sandstone outcrops on the slope above, mature conifers screening the house from the road, south-facing so it takes sun most of the day. Attached two-car garage. Exterior sauna building that doubles as a bunkhouse. A whirlpool room with a roll-up garage door that opens the tub to views of rolling horse pasture and mountainsides. Metal pole barn for storage or parking. Permitted three-bedroom septic. Water rights in hand for both the spring that currently serves the house and the domestic well, which can be brought back online. Reece is downsizing to his next project, a treehouse on the Yellowstone. This one is ready for someone else's hand.